In the early morning hours (4 am) of 27 August 1939, five days before the outbreak of what would become World War Two, a small group of people gathered at the Ernst Heinkel AG grass airfield at Marienehe near Rostock. They were there to witness the first flight of the first turbojet-powered aircraft in history, the Heinkel He 178, piloted by company test pilot Erich Warsitz. This is the history of this magnificent aircraft, pieced together by author David Myhra, PhD from documents and reports long thought nonexistent. Computer artist Jozef Gatial has contributed the colored plates in the middle of this book, to show how the He 178 would have looked in real life.